Charles a. “Rip” Engle rates with Edward North
Robinson and Tuss McLaughry as one of Brown’s most successful
and popular football coaches. A Western Maryland product who
learned his football under Dick Harlow, Engle served as an
assistant at Brown to Skip Stahley before taking over as head coach
in 1944. He immediately installed his version of the explosive
Wing-T offense and achieved something that first year that no Brown
team had been able to do since 1928 – best Colgate and its
coach, Andy Kerr. Engle’s final two years at Brown were his
best. His 1948 team was 7-2, followed by the “8 for 9 in
‘49” group. Both teams were dominated by a cocky group
of gung-ho veterans who loved the game of football. There teams had
everything – depth, size, speed, an imaginative offense (they
averaged nearly 30 points a game), tight defense, and superb
coaching. There was a spirit among the players of the Engle era
that hadn’t been seen on College Hill since the days of the
Iron Men. These Rip Engle players knew they were good and they
played with the verve and drive of a confident crew. The Bears
needed all their confidence in their final game under Engle.
Trailing Colgate, 26-7, late in the third period of the 1949
Thanksgiving Day game, Brown practically blew the Red Raiders out
of the stadium in the final 17 minutes in rallying for a 41-26
victory. When the soft-spoken Engle left, the Brown community lost
a gentleman and a friend as well as a football coach. His six-year
record was 28-20-4. Coaching at Penn State for the next 16 years
against some of the nation’s best, Engle had a 111-47-4
record, including a 9-1 season in 1962 and an 8- mark in 1959.
What’s more, Rip Engle, in his last 19 years of coaching,
never experienced a losing season.